John's Not Mad essay

Media Level 2 Analysis of ‘Johns Not Mad’

In this essay I am going to analyse the documentary ‘Johns not mad’ and look at how Tourette syndrome affects John and his mum in every day life but also how the Tourette’s affects the pupils and teachers at Johns school.

To do this I am going to analyse certain scenes from the documentary. I shall be focusing on scenes such as the supermarket and how his Tourette’s causes John to swear reluctantly. I would be analysing various aspects of this production and why they wanted present the documentary like this.

Observational footage

In the scene at the supermarket we first get to see how Johns Tourette’s affects him and his mum in a public place. We also find out how other people react when they hear John swear uncontrollably and just stare at him as if he was ‘mad’ not knowing that he has Tourette’s and as his mum explains in an interview ‘He just says the first thought that comes into his head’. The scene is set out in a supermarket to show what its like someone like John in a public place.

Later on in the documentary we see John on a school trip at the garden centre and how his Tourette’s becomes worse by developing a spitting habit and randomly spitting at people who are unaware of his disability.  would find the habit disgusting   and won’t want to be around John. This would create sympathy towards John because people don’t want to be around him and he would be lonely.

In another scene of the documentary we see John having dinner at home with his family and how the family cope with the Johns Tourette’s but also find out that Johns dad avoids having to deal with Johns condition and choses to either work late or go the pub which would also creates sympathy because also one of his parents doesn’t want to be around Johns disability. They showed this scene because the audience watching this documentary would want to know what he is like at home.

Interviews

Throughout the documentary they also show 4 interviews from different perspectives of John, Johns Mum, Oliver sax and Johns teacher.

First we look at the perspective of John on how he suffers from not being able to control his Tourette’s and how frustrating and upset it makes him which would make the audience of the documentary feel sorry for John. Each interview is run through out the documentary, which works well with the context of the narration of the show.

Next we look at the perspective of Johns mum and how she has to deal with explaining Johns situation to people like at Johns school with situations of bullying from the pupils and teachers at the school.

We also look at the Interview from the schoolteacher on how she deals with the comments from john because some people would find the comments offensive and she explains about his disability.

After we see a perspective from neurologist Oliver sax explains the disability of people like John.

Voice Overs

The voice overs of the documentary provides context by telling the audience what’s going on in the different scenes of the documentary and explains how Johns Tourette’s is effecting him in that certain situation. They use a female narrator in the documentary because they provide a soft and calm tone and also a soft caring approach to encourage empathy and understanding for John and his Tourette’s.

Evaluation

Through out this essay I have chosen to focus on three different scenes such as, from when John is at the supermarket, garden centre and when he has dinner with his family at home. From my observational footage we first see John and his mum at the supermarket to see how John’s Tourette syndrome affects him in public places like the supermarket, we see that he starts to shout swear words to people, including his mum. We then get to see the reaction from the other people looking shocked from they were hearing John swear at them, they then cut to the voice overs to explain what is going on with John and his Tourette syndrome at the supermarket. After that they cut to interviews from John to show his perspective on how he feels about his Tourette syndrome in a public place, which makes us feel sorry for John having to deal with his disability and other people thinking that he is rude with swear words that he says to people. We also see an interview from John’s mum to see how she feels about the situations from when people react to John’s disability.

The next scene I chose to look at was when we see John on a school trip at the garden centre, from my observational footage we see John’s Tourette syndrome get worse by developing a spitting habit and randomly spitting at his teacher. After that we see the reaction from John’s classmates looking disgusted, which would make them want to avoid John, which would create sympathy because john would feel lonely.

The last scene I chose to analyse was when he is having dinner with his family, from my observational footage we see John suffering from his disability of Tourettes and his family trying to cope with the disability and his mum starts to talk about how his dad walked out and how he tries to avoid John’s disability.

Tourette’s syndrome is a neurological condition, which affects the brain and the nervous system, and you can notice tourette’s by a combination random noises and movements called tics.

Some examples of tourettes are things like randomly swearing, physical movements. The causes of tourettes are unknown but doctors are thinking Tourette syndrome is linked with the brain.